He will be a master of deception and will become arrogant; he will destroy many without warning. Daniel 8:25a NLT
A master of deception. My attention was caught by that description. It was caught because, more and more, in recent years I have come to think of lies and lying not as one of the sins, but as sin itself. Why do I think that?
Why do we lie? We lie to try to make Reality conform to what we think are our best interests. That is what sin is. The reality is that the vase is broken and that Jimmy did it. So I ask Jimmy, “Did you do that?” and with a straight face he says, “No!” Jimmy did not think reality, the truth, would serve his needs, so he tried to deny it. But we cannot deny it. There is that which is so, whether I like it or not. I must conform to it, not the other way around. That should have led us humans to recognize that our cosmos is not all there is. Why did it not? Because we do not want to admit that anything exists outside of ourselves. Whatever we want to be so is so. If I feel I am a woman, I am a woman.
Wrong! Feelings are facts, and they need to be dealt with, but they are not Reality. What needs to happen with Jimmy? He needs to begin to comprehend grace. Yes, to face reality and to admit it must have consequences – it will have consequences – but if he discovers that beyond the consequences there is acceptance and embrace, he will begin to muster the courage to admit the truth, to accept reality, and in so doing he will begin to be able to conform to reality. The Bible says God is Love. It could also say God is Reality, Truth. In fact, that is exactly what Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” Jesus is the living manifestation of that transcendent Reality to which we are all called to be conformed. That, in fact, is the Christian life: resting in his grace, able to admit when we do not conform, ever more and more being transformed into Reality. So Paul can say to his hearers again and again, “Stop lying!”
Called To Be Transformed 